You know, as an NBA fan typically July is one of the most interesting months of the year.  I'm talking about if you're a real fan who actually watches all year long and reads up on everything you can, rather than someone who just waits for "the second season" to start before you tune in.  July is usually free agency, trades, signings and getting our first glimpse of up and comers playing in the summer league.  July is quite often where conversations and debates which dominate an entire season often begin (look at last July's big signings in Miami if you doubt this).  August is usually a pretty slow month, while we basically wait to see how all the new teams will begin to look in training camps, but July is usually quite entertaining.

However, as we all know, that's not been the case this July.  No, thanks to the lockout this July has mainly been the time for something which should concern everyone associated with the NBA: indifference.  All those casual fans who mainly tune in for the nationally televised games and "the second season" probably could care less about the NBA's current labor struggle, especially now that it looks like the NFL season is set to go.  For many of those people they probably won't even notice that professional basketball isn't being played here in the US until almost May, and even when they do find out it's not on the air, they may not care.

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The next player up in our Player Report Card series is backup point guard Steve Blake.  Steve was signed by the Lakers almost a year ago on July 8th, 2010 to a 4-year contract worth $16 million.  Mitch Kupchak and the Lakers brought Blake to the team to fill the void left by the Lakers choosing to not re-sign Jordan Farmar, who went on to sign as a free agent with the New Jersey nets after spending his first five seasons with LA.  Blake was brought to LA because he was supposed to provide some of what the talented but inconsistent Farmar could not.  Blake was supposed to be a steady veteran who could hit spot up three-pointers, who could help run the triangle offense and distribute the ball, and who could play some defense.  And mainly Blake was brought in to help take some of the minutes away from aging starting point guard, Derek Fisher.  As we all know, things didn't quite go as planned.

As a Laker fan, I remember first really becoming aware of Steve Blake as a player during the 2006-07 season when he started most of the games for the Denver Nuggets after being traded there from Milwaukee midway through the year.  He then became a much larger blip on my radar screen when he signed with the Portland Trail Blazers following that season, as he went on to help Portland be a real thorn in the side of the Lakers for the next few years.  In February of last year Blake was traded to the Clippers, but during his time with both the Nuggets and the Blazers my impression of him was one of being a fearless competitor with a dead-eye long distance shooting stroke.  As a Laker fan I will say his presence on the court always worried me when he came into the game for the opposition, so when the Lakers signed him last summer I, like most people, thought it was a great move for the Lakers.  One year into the Steve Blake Laker Era, it seems like everyone else I was very, very wrong.

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In our continuing series of handing out grades for everyone who wore a Laker jersey this season, we now come to Theo Ratliff.  Much like the last player in this series, Joe Smith, Ratliff has also enjoyed quite the team-hopping tour as a player in the NBA, having now played for 9 different teams in 11 different stints as a player.  And while Joe Smith's career may have seen him as being vastly overpriced to his various teams in terms of the NBA draft, Ratliff's career has instead seen him as having been vastly overpriced to his various teams in the more conventional (and all too common, in the NBA) way of salary.  To illustrate just how overpriced Ratliff was for much of his career, Ratliff is at this point maybe most famous for the nickname various sportswriters gave him a few years ago: "Theo Ratliff's expiring contract".  This was due to the fact that despite coming off a multi-year contract that was already paying him over $10 million a year while averaging about 8 points and 7 rebounds per game, in 2004 the Portland Blazers decided to give him a three year contract extension worth $35 million, or about $11.7 million per season.  

If you're scratching your head as to how a player who never once averaged even 13 points or 8.5 rebounds per game for any season in the league (and who was also frequently injured) was able to bilk that kind of cash out of so many NBA front offices, it's for two reasons.  First, the man was Mutombo-esque in his ability to block shots, leading the league in blocks per game in the 2000-2001, 2002-2003 and in 2003-2004 seasons, while also finishing in the top 4 in that category in 4 other seasons.  The second reason is because most NBA owners are so foolishly stupid about how they spend their money on their players that we're on the verge of them having to lock the players out so they can try to get a grip on their own wild overspending.

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I come here not to bury the Spurs, but to praise them.

That's right, me, a Laker fan, has come here to write a postmortem of sorts and to pay homage to the Lakers' greatest rivals over the last 15 years: the San Antonio Spurs.  Last night the Spurs were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2000, and for the first time in Tim Duncan's storied career in the NBA.  Some have said that the defeat marks the end of the Spurs' time as championship contenders, that their championship window has closed, that the sun has set on this most successful team of the post-Jordan NBA.  The Spurs are a team that for many, myself included, conjured up extremely strong feelings of distaste, disgust and dismay for many, many years.  But they conjured up a couple other things as well: fear, and then later, respect.

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Something really jumped out at me last night and I was glad to see Phil Jackson voluntarily addressed it afterwards:

"I think it was my fault," he said in a rare mea culpa. "Substitution probably hurt us a little bit in the course of the game, and I think that I tried to play too many players at that time in the game to get us going, which created a little bit of hesitancy."

With that in mind, let's discuss the playoff rotations.

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Can you feel it in the air?  Hell, can you taste it in the air?  The playoffs are here.  At long last we get to see the cream rise to the top as the 8 best teams in each conference battle it out to see which two will compete for the title.  But before we see if our Lakers have a Hollywood ending in store for us in June, we've got to sit through the opening credits.

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[Ed. Note: Folks, please welcome Wild Yams, our first community volunteer author here at SS&R. Like many of you, I'm sure, I've seen Wild Yams' comments on various blogs across these internets, and have always been impressed with the insight and analysis he provides. SS&R is lucky to have him on board. He kicks off his tenure here at SS&R with an excellent discussion of the 2009 regular season MVP race.]

I'm new around here, but then again I guess we all are, and Josh gracefully asked me to help out with some of the writing duties on SS&R, so I thought I should hurry up and make my first post.  With the regular season over there's a lot to talk about, from the upcoming series with the Jazz, to the speculation that Kevin Garnett is done for the year, to other playoff matchups around the league, including who the Lakers might meet in the second round after beating if they beat the Utah Jazz.  But as always seems to be the case at this time of year, the thing that is foremost on everyone's minds is who will win the MVP, and this year is no different.

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